


still wanna waste my time with you

by Nyxierose



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 17:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7627189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxierose/pseuds/Nyxierose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assorted Penny/Kady prompt fills & other short fics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. missed you

**Author's Note:**

> Since this format works for other stuff, here we are again!! All of these have been previously posted on my [tumblr](http://electricbluebutterflies.tumblr.com), where I'm always accepting (not necessarily DOING) prompts and other distractions. Collection title from "Fake It" by Bastille.
> 
> Also, just kinda assume that all of these little things are indefinitely-post-s1 unless otherwise noted.

She’s not affectionate by nature, but she clings to him all the same.

There’s new weight in his skin, a hundred questions Kady is still hours from asking. Scars circle his wrists, too even to have been self-inflicted, and there’s a sadness in his eyes that she hasn’t seen before. Penny is inherently the sort of man who wears his jadedness like a shield, but this here is something else entirely and it scares her.

“Missed you,” she murmurs, and those two little words aren’t enough but they sound a little bit like forever.

“Thought you were dead,” he replies like he’d accepted it well before their paths crossed again.

“Same.”

He leans down and presses his forehead to hers, his hands still safe on the small of her back. This sort of minor intimacy, they can safely do. Everything else… they’ve got time now, she thinks, and she’s fine with using it.

“Stay?”

“Stay.”


	2. better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt - "a massage".
> 
> NSFW content in this one, yay!!

“Stay still,” she hisses, applying pressure just so on his thigh.

Compared to everything else that’s happened lately, a pulled muscle ought to be nothing, but it hurts like freaking hell and turns out Penny _does_  have a breaking point and thank goodness for sort-of-girlfriends who actually give a damn. He has his doubts in Kady’s actual skill here, but her hands feel lovely on his skin and-

She shifts the pressure point just slightly and he growls as the pain shoots right up towards his crotch. Dammit.

“I told you, stay still.”

“What are you even doing?”

“Watch,” she laughs, and oh he knows her too well.

One of her hands remains in the proper position, her fingernails jabbing into his skin at random. The other creeps up his thigh and ghosts over his dick, already half-hard from the mere circumstance of being naked and on his back and spread out on a mattress in the presence of his current sexual partner. He wishes he was more surprised, but what Kady lacks in subtlety, she more than compensates for in determination.

“There,” she murmurs. As one hand finds a new painful spot to push into, the other curls around his length and begins to slowly stroke. “That an improvement?”

Penny is lucky to manage a growl, the two very different stimuli clashing too much for him to do anything else. He’s pretty sure his leg is actually _worse_  now than when she suggested this idea, but her other hand is all too distracting. He can’t focus, pain and pleasure intermingling until everything is so close and-

“Feel better?”

No, he thinks. No, he is close and aching and the sudden absence of her hands on his body is a goddamn problem and it won’t take much, another few strokes and he’d-

Before he can finish that thought, she climbs onto the bed, kneeling between his spread legs and gently pressing her lips to the tip of his cock before opening her mouth and swallowing him almost whole. One of her hands slips lower and does something beautiful and unholy with his balls, and then all it takes is a few shifts in pressure for him to spill himself inside her. He sees her eyes light up as it happens and knows that in this moment, there’s nowhere else either of them would rather be.

“Told you I was good,” she smirks, making her way up the mattress and flouncing down next to him.

“I owe you for that.”

“ _Later_ , yes. Right now, I’m fine.”

“Kade-”

“What?”

“I love you.”

She sighs contentedly as she reaches for his hand, and it hits him that maybe today isn’t so bad after all…


	3. one of these days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt - “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”
> 
> S1-ish.

She’s not sure what it is to be loved until she meets him.

Sure, Kady has a vague idea of what that’s _supposed_ to look like - chaotic as her childhood was, she still watched all the goddamn Disney princess movies and still knows enough about fairytales. Enough to know it’s all bullshit, enough to know that it doesn’t happen to real people. And if by some chance it _does_ , not to people like her. Ever.

She’s a realist, and reality sucks, and she braces for the worst before it comes because that’s the only way she stays alive.

Then, completely out of the blue, everything she thought she knew about the world gets turned upside-down by someone who does the exact same shit she does but still has a heart underneath it all.

At first glance, Penny is sharp edges and disillusionment, and that’s enough to get her into his bed. He’s absolutely stunning in her preferred sort of way, a good fuck, and has zero delusions about what’s going on between them. They’re warm bodies for each other, an escape from the madness around them, and using each other for outside purposes and not talking about it. For her, he’s a perfect decoy and ally. For him, she’s… she’s not sure _what_  she is for him, but she’s definitely an outlet in some form.

It’s enough. It’s more than enough.

And then he falls for her.

She notices slowly, as it blossoms around the both of them. She’s pretty sure it’s the first time he’s ever tried to be  _subtle_  about something, but she sees right through it all. Notices the little things, the way he always waits up for her to fall asleep on the nights she stays (which are more and more frequent now and she’s not really sure why) and the way he gets more gentle with her. She wants to scream that she doesn’t need that, she’s not a porcelain doll and their sexual repertoire more than proves it, but she likes holding his hand too much to fight back.

He’s in love with her, and she’s not sure why but she thinks she likes it.

She finally says something a couple months in, one of the rare nights that clothes mostly stay on but she still curls up around him like always. They’re both sober, haven’t even really made out yet, and it’d be weird for her except that it isn’t because it’s _him_. God, she’s really sucking at this whole emotion thing.

“I’ve seen the way you look at me,” she murmurs. “I know you think I don’t notice but I do.”

She feels a shock run through his body, pure panic. “What do you mean?” he asks, and it’s the first time she’s ever seen him _scared_.

“This isn’t just sex for you. Maybe it never was.” She leans over and kisses his cheek, sweetest little thing she’s done in a long time. “I’m not saying I mind. I’m just saying I _know_.”

“Problem?”

“Don’t think so,” she murmurs. “As long as you… I don’t feel that way about you. Not yet. Maybe I will someday, I don’t know, but-”

“It’s okay,” he says, slipping his arm around her waist and pulling her closer. “I can live with that.”

“Good. I like this, whatever the fuck we’re doing. Don’t wanna lose it.”

Maybe, she thinks… maybe she’s gonna fall for him too, one of these days.


	4. too much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt - "I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. That’s the problem.”

Penny has had a lot of strange days, but this one’s a real winner. The book he’s trying to figure out is not in any language he’s ever even heard of before, and making this project somehow even worse, his “help” is his sorta-ex-girlfriend. Emphasis on _sorta_ , because they didn’t exactly get closure and they’ve both slept with other people since then and he’s torn between wanting to yell at her and wanting to fuck her on that oh-so-convenient table and-

“Just kill the bullshit already,” Kady mutters, apparently feeling all the same things.

“What bullshit?” Penny counters. If he’s reading her correctly - and the odds ain’t good there, it’s like half of why he likes her but now is no time for _that_  thought pattern - there are about four options here and he’s up a tree if he picks the wrong one.

“I know you hate me. You have every right to, but you’re doing a shitty job hiding it.”

He takes a step towards her. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. That’s the problem.”

For a few moments, she’s absolutely speechless, arm’s length from him and statue still. It’s a sight to behold, the only sound in the room the whirring of a semi-functional portable fan over by the door, and he wants to freeze this moment forever because it’s the purest thing he’ll ever experience and-

“You. Don’t. Hate. Me?”

If he were a slightly different person, or perhaps a little less in love with her, he’d take that cue and hug her. As it is, he keeps the sacred distance. “I really don’t.”

“Why? I screwed you over, Pen. I know damn well what I did, and I don’t regret it as much as I probably should and-”

Screw distance, he thinks, two steps forward and hands on her shoulders as gentle as he can. “Shit happens. I have bigger things to be mad about.”

She gives him a half-smile in return, almost shy and it’s a new good look on her. “I still can’t believe this.”

“I thought you were dead for a couple months, Kade. I got over the rest of it.”

“I still fucked up.”

“Not saying you didn’t. Just saying I like you too much to care.”

“I’m still not used to people like you,” she murmurs, bridging the distance and kissing his cheek. “But I could learn.”

“Cool.”

“Now, are we gonna unfuck this or…”

“Whatever you want.”

“God, you got soft without me around.”

“You love it,” he laughs.

“And if I do?”

“I can live with that…”


	5. impulses

Problem is, this girl’s gonna be the end of him.

Penny knew this fate was headed his way the moment he saw her ripped jeans and devil-may-care eyes, and he’s feeling it now with her mouth slammed against his in the back room at work. He’s feeling it now, and a lot of other things too with the way Kady’s hipbones are clashing with his, the way one of her hands is on the back of his head and the other’s slipping up under his shirt and-

Objectively, this is a really shitty idea.

Like, top-ten material. Maybe even top-five.

But goddamn Kady and her pomegranate-chapstick lips are enough to make him stop caring and stop thinking about anything else but here, now, this.

She’s gonna be the end of him, yeah, whatever. She nips at his bottom lip, flicks her tongue into his mouth, laughs against his skin and it’s electrifying. Kady’s the sort of woman that long unrequited crushes are made of, and Penny had made his peace with a long six months of pining until she either quit or started dating someone else (or maybe both, both is always an option, the more pain the merrier, ain’t that how that phrase goes). But in the back room of this shitty bar, which is basically dead tonight anyways, this doesn’t feel a damn thing like unrequited.

“The hell did you do that for,” he murmurs when she finally gives him more than a second to catch his breath. Not that he’s complaining, but-

“You’re hot, I’m bored, shit happens. Problem?”

He lunges at her again, lets his hands spread across her ass, and in hindsight he regrets nothing at all.


	6. quiet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt - "things you said under the stars and in the grass"

Kady’s lying on her back in open air in a park in some midwestern state she doesn’t even remember the name of ‘cause it was Penny’s turn to drive today and her turn to pick out music and decide on stops and yell at him all three times he didn’t see a construction sign and almost hit somebody. (Unsurprisingly, Penny drives like a city kid who learned how via video games and may or may not actually have a license. Kady wishes she were more surprised.) They’re stopped for the night now though, and while her companion wrangles the tent that was probably broken before it passed into their hands, Kady is resting, staring up at the stars and-

“Exactly how much are you gonna hate me if we sleep in the car tonight?”

Kady knows that look on his face, that unspoken what-the-fuck of not being responsible but still getting stuck with the consequences. She pats the ground beside her, motioning for him to join her. “What happened?”

“Two tent poles broke,” Penny shrugs, slowly lowering himself to the ground and stretching out his body on the soft grass. “Took ‘em long enough.”

“Duct tape?”

“Couldn’t find any. We did not think this through, babe.”

She rolls over and presses her lips to his jaw, playful. “I wanted to do one non-tragic cliché thing in my life. You could’ve said no to _this_ one.”

“Your other option was getting married in Vegas,” he points out, moving both their bodies so his arm is under her back and her head is almost-but-not-quite over his heart. “Figured with the people we know, roadtrip is less likely to get us killed when we get home.”

Kady laughs, leaning up for a full-on kiss. “You could’ve come up with a better plan,” she reminds him. “You just chose not to.”

“God, the things I do for you...”

“You fucking love me.”

They’re quiet for a long while, bodies entwined all innocent, staring up at the night sky without need for words.

“Yeah,” Penny breathes when he feels like he’s been silent long enough. “Yeah, I fucking love you.”

“Good. I love you too.”


	7. exception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt - "don't you dare walk away".
> 
> Missing/extended 2x08 scene. Because boy do I have FEELINGS.

He loves her. He fucking _loves_  her. Asshole.

Kady is way too sober for this bullshit. And also kinda nauseous. And not sure what to do other than her usual, whirl around and take one two steps distance and-

“Don’t you dare walk away,” Penny growls, that low way his voice gets when he’s worried. (Kady’s caused that voice more than anyone else in his life right now, she’s pretty sure, and she’s not sure how she feels about that.)

She turns back to face him, stares a hole into a particular stain on the rug beneath their feet. “I’m not that girl.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

It means a lot of things, she wants to say. It means one of her greatest fears is becoming The Girlfriend, completely useless as her own entity, and she knows damn well he likes the parts of her that clash with him but she’s still scared. It means she lost track of lovers a couple years back but this one, this one who’s one vulnerable moment from wrapping his arms around her, he’s the only one who didn’t screw her over. It means he’s too good for her and he’d better figure that out asap. It means-

“Whatever you want,” Kady breathes.

Instead of whatever big dramatic gesture would make more sense, Penny closes the distance between them and simply takes her hands in his own. “I love you, and I’m gonna keep saying that until you get that I mean it. I’m not planning on going anywhere, Kady. Haven’t been since the moment I fell for you.”

“Was that before or after the first time we fucked?”

“When you broke the portal.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Hot _and_  badass. So, perfect.”

Kady laughs, smile blossoming on her face even though she wants to be mad. Penny is... gods, he’s an asshole who doesn’t love easily, she gets that, but somehow _she_  of all people is his exception. And maybe, she thinks, maybe she might be ready to let him be hers.

“You okay?”

She looks up, makes eye contact, takes half a step forward and wraps her arms around him. “You’re growing on me,” she mutters.

“Vague...”

“It’s still weird as hell that you feel that way about me, okay? I’m still not used to it, but... it’s not _bad_. I don’t mind it. Just... weird.”

He leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. “I can live with that.”

“Good, ‘cause I’m not going anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder that I'm always taking prompts for these babes over on my tumblr [@electricbluebutterflies](http://electricbluebutterflies.tumblr.com).


	8. avoiding the elephant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt - “Why do you tell me you love me only when you’re drunk or dreaming?”

She doesn’t do affection like normal people.

It’s not a conscious intentional thing; more like the natural result of the storms and nightmares that have shaped Kady into who she is. She’s good enough with her body, knows when to cuddle and when to kiss and when to fuck and when to not touch at all, but everything else… everything else is a mystery for her. Putting words to the places of her heart is just... sometimes...

Guh, she can’t even find words to explain why she can’t find words. She’s a disaster.

And of course, because the universe has  a strange sense of humor, she’s fucking someone who does _not_  have that problem.

Penny is, when there’s no one else visibly listening who’ll give him shit about it later, a goddamn sweetheart. Penny reminds her at least daily that he loves her, he’s choosing her, and if they somehow survive the bullshit their weird circle of friends and acquaintances keep dragging them into, there’s probably a future for the two of them. Hell, he wants three kids and a house in the suburbs - hasn’t said so in those words, but Kady’s pretty sure she’s right. There’s no pressure in his affections and daydreams, just hope that - if things calm down and she chooses it just as much as he does - they could make things work.

Kady, on the other hand, keeps her mouth shut about the fact that she’s already made that choice. At least she’s pretty sure she has. Backing out is always a tempting option, but she doesn’t _want to._ She wants-

She’s asleep, in the midst of a dream where she’s brave enough to say what she feels, when she feels gentle pressure on her shoulder. Regaining consciousness is a bit of a process, but she likes what she sees when she opens her eyes. Penny has a nighttime sort of beauty to him, she thinks, especially lovely when it’s two in the morning and he’s bathed in moonlight and dammit Kady is a _romantic_  when she’s not totally awake and-

“You were talking in your sleep again,” he murmurs.

Shit.

So much for avoiding the elephant.

“What did I even say?” she replies, hesitant. Maybe it’s not as bad as she thinks, maybe-

“Why do you tell me you love me only when you’re drunk or dreaming?”

 _Shit_.

For once in her life, Kady decides she might as well just admit the obvious. “I’m not.... I’m not used to feeling things like that. You’ve been in my mind, you’ve seen those scars more than anyone else ever has.  And I’ve told you a hundred times that I have _reasons_  for guarding my heart. So... I guess I’m just scared.”

Penny shifts closer to her, wrapping an arm around her hips and slipping halfway underneath her. “I get it. You’re healing. I can live with that. I just think it’s kinda funny that you’re a lot less scared when you’re not fully in your mind.”

If she were a little more lucid, she’d pick a fight, but right now she’s tired and her sorta-boyfriend makes a comfortable pillow and she does not give a damn. “Someday I will be.”

“I can wait. Long as you don’t mind that I-”

“MInd?” Kady laughs. “Hell no. I’m not sure how to respond to you half the time, but... it’s sweet. Just don’t give me flowers or any dramatic shit like that and we’re good.”

“Love you too,” he murmurs, kissing the tip of her nose.

Someday she’s gonna say it back, but until then, this is good enough for them both.


End file.
